EMILY

“You’repregnant?” Sara repeated.

“Will you keep your voice down?” Emily implored.

“But are you?”

“Yes. I just found out a couple of days ago.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe this! What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to keep it,” Emily said firmly. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother and, well — I know this isn’t exactly ideal, but I can’t bring myself to do anything else.”

“Wow,” Sara said. “That’s a huge life change. Are you okay?”

“I’m a little freaked out,” Emily admitted.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you are. I would be panicking.”

“That’s not really helping.”

“Sorry,” Sara said. “What are you going to do?”

“You just asked me that.”

“I know, but I mean… how are you going to handle it? You work full time. You work longer hours than I do most of the time. Are you going to leave the hospital?”

“I’m going to have to think about it,” Emily said miserably. “I mean, I don’t want to do that. This job means the world to me. You know that.”

“I do,” Sara agreed. “No one has worked harder than you have, and it would be terrible to see you have to quit, Emily. I’m sure we can figure something out. You can’t be the first person to have gotten pregnant during her internship. The hospital has day care options for parents. You could take advantage of them.”

“I’m sure that’s what I’ll end up doing,” Emily said. “I just hate to think of my kid spending ten hours a day in day care. I’ll scale back my hours here if I can, but even so…”

Sara bit her lip. “It’s kind of a sensitive question, I know, but what about the father?”

Emily shook her head. “He’s not going to be involved.”

“Does he know about it?”

“Yeah, he knows.” Emily couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her tone at the memory of how Dominic had reacted when he read the test results. As if she had orchestrated the whole thing deliberately as part of a plot to mess up his life.

“He’s just… not interested?” Sara asked.

“He didn’t even say anything when he found out. He just walked off like he didn’t care.”

“Can I ask who it is?”

Emily shook her head. “I don’t want to say.”

“Which means it’s someone I know,” Sara said.

“Don’t do that. Don’t try to guess. I really don’t want to talk about who it is. That’s not important.Heisn’t important,” Emily said. “He’s not going to be a part of this, so… forget him. That’s what I think.”

“If that’s what you want,” Sara said.

“It is.”

“Okay.” The expression on Sara’s face was highly skeptical. “But I don’t mind telling you, if I was pregnant, the guy wouldn’t be getting away so easily. If he didn’t want to be involved on a personal level, I would be getting him involved on a financial one.”